Greetings and salutations --

This has been one of the most hectic and stressful months of my life.  Since I've spent 654 months on this planet, I have enough life experience to know what I am talking about.

It's been a fortnight and two days since I had surgery, and I still have throat pain. Fortunately the pain gets less with each succeeding day. When the surgeon told me that the post operative pain, would "hurt like hell," he wasn't whistling Dixie.

I would like to say that the health care system that I was exposed to worked flawlessly. I would like to say that. There were some high points. Like the admissions staffer at the hospital told me I would get asked the same questions over and over by the clinical staff, the anestesiologist, the OR tech, etc., prior to surgery. She said "this is part of a new protocol, and that hospital staff were not a bunch or morons."

With all the energy about our healthcare system, this was a unique opportunity to see the good, the bad and the ugly from a patient's point of view.

I haven't had a general anesthetic since the 1990's and I remember being physically ill afterwards. There has been progress. No ill effects. Thanks doc for asking me if I had allergies and listening to me when I said I was asthmatic. Your assistant brought me an inhaler and I had no breathing difficulties after the surgery.

As for the surgeon, he is a skilled technician and he's good at what he does. I'll trade the lack of good interpersonal skills in this case. If he were an oncology doc, I'd have read him the riot act. A post op visit would have been appreciated.

I'm going to give the hospital a B+ for attitude and people skills. They failed on finding a hospital bed as I was in the recovery room for almost four hours. Even my joke, "Doesn't this joint have a 12:30 checkout time?" didn't get any fruitful results.

I wanted to get some sleep and the state police lieutenant in the next bed was kvetching about the long commute she has to the Holden troup. Excuse me, but being a Mass Cop and statie at that didn't make me very empathetic. I did discern that she gets poor treatment because she's a woman, not a guy, and I did buy into that.

I ended up having to spend the night. Let me tell you that catherization must be the new waterboarding. I would have given up state secrets just to have them pull that tube outta me. I'm a wimp I know, but that was cruel and unusual punishment.

The nursing staff was great. I just wish they didn't bring me a roommate at 1:30 in the morning. I didn't need sleep apnea to stay awake that night.

So it's been two whole days without a popsicle, ice cream or Ensure, and I am enjoying solid food again. Pizza was a bad choice.

Anyway it's nice to be able to blog again. Hope you all are well!